"For what can war but endless war still breed?" ---Milton

Barack Obama is feverishly preparing for war against Syria. But why? Al-Assad has crossed the "red line"- he gassed his own people!

Really? In 1988, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks launched by Iraq against Iran that were far more devastating than anything that Syria has seen, according to Foreign Policy.

And in the November 2004 fight for Fallujah, Iraq, the U.S. forces themselves used illegal white phosphorus munitions.

Their moves are hypocritical. Their pretext is to "punish" al-Assad". America's real intent is to help the losing Syrian rebels, including al-Qaeda, to turn the tide of war, topple al-Assad, and return to dominate the Middle East.

John McCain first mentioned the phrase "to help turn the tide of war." There is no war that McCain does not like, and he learned nothing from his five-year sojourn in the Hanoi Hilton. He and Lindsey Graham, another war lover, spoke to reporters after a meeting with Obama, saying they wanted to see Obama articulate a broader strategy, "a goal that over time to degrade Bashar Assad's capabilities, to increase and upgrade the capabilities of the Syrian Free Army and the Free Syrian government so they can reverse the momentum on the battlefield."

They came away encouraged. McCain said that he had urged Obama to think beyond simply punitive strikes against Assad and he indicated that a bigger response is under consideration. "I don't think that it is an accident that the aircraft carrier is moving over in the region," he said.

Helping a friend has a clear precedent. In 1988, in the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraq's defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq and helped Iraq avoid a major defeat.

There is another war lover I should not leave unmentioned: Samantha Power, the Amazon warrior, the Valkyrie, the Hindu goddess and the "reincarnated war hawk". She told an audience at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. that there is "no risk free door number two" in regard to Syria." She said that the United States must take limited military action against the use of weapons of mass destruction to "deter others in the world who may follow suit." Does she know that another woman warrior before her said something similar and tried to scare the American people with a "mushroom cloud" which turned out to be a lot of smoke? (I am of course talking about Condoleezza Rice.)

Obama is not the first war lover in American history. There is saying that the United States has fought 260 wars since its founding, and fifty in the past half century alone. Of these, large-scale conflicts include: the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish War, the First World War, the Second World War, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The First Gulf War, the Iraq War, the Afghan war and the Libya War (2011).

These wars resulted in huge casualties. According to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel economics prize winner, the Afghan and Iraq wars cost the United States some six trillion dollars if ongoing medical expenses for veterans are included.

The U.S. "limited strike" against Syria may not last just two days. It may be three….As war is the most unpredictable human enterprise, no one really knows how long America's Syrian war will last, or how large its scope will be. But one thing people do know: it will be a strategic disaster.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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